Real Madrid v Manchester United: Gary Neville claims Cristiano Ronaldo is Old Trafford's most influential of all time

Such has been the ease with which Gary Neville has taken to punditry you
assume he must have been rehearsing the role for years. But the key element
that adds zest to his analysis is that he was so recently involved in the
game he now dissects with such facility.

So when he says of Cristiano Ronaldo “he altered my thinking about football” it is not because like the rest of us he studied him from the stands or on television.

He had his view changed by playing directly behind the great Portuguese for four seasons. That is what you call local knowledge.

“Until he came along, we’d had that wonderful midfield, Beckham, Keane, Scholes and Giggs,” Neville says of his years at Manchester United.

“They would operate pretty much in their positions. Then you watch Ronaldo and it’s a much more flexible approach. He’s slipping across the line, switching wings, playing as the false nine.

"Team-mate or opponent, you can’t pin him down, your head’s spinning. Ronaldo’s almost reinvented the system. Like Messi, like Cruyff, Maradona, the great players alter your perception on the game. And Ronaldo is right up there.”

Not that Neville claims it was always easy playing behind someone whose approach to defence was roughly on a par with a cat’s to running water: something to be avoided at all costs.

“For me he was a challenge in the early years,” Neville says which, remembering the verbal roistering he used to issue in Ronaldo’s direction across the Old Trafford turf, must constitute the euphemism of the decade.

“Like all young wingers, his decisions were often wrong. He’d get himself confused. It was frustrating. Why wasn’t he tracking back? You’d think: look at Ryan [Giggs], he’s getting back, playing almost as another left back at times, just do what he’s doing. But he grew, he matured, physically and in his decision making.”

To the point where, Neville believes, he can be placed at the very summit of United performers.

“People talk about Duncan Edwards, George Best and other exceptional talents but can there really have been anyone at Old Trafford who influenced matches like we saw him do between 2006-08?

"That was a time when we in the dressing room thought, if we can keep a clean sheet, he can go out and win it for us. For me, you define greatness by whether you have an influence over the biggest matches. He did continuously.”

But even so, Neville admits he had no expectation that Ronaldo would scale the heights he has in Spain.

“You could see a determination in his character, an intensity; he wouldn’t be afraid to announce he wanted to be the very best. He always lived for the big moments. But you can never think anyone could score 20 hat tricks for Real Madrid.

"The pressure at that club, the £80 million price tag, the unsettled nature of the way players change, managers change: that’s some challenge.”

A challenge sufficient, he says, to fry even the most secure of talent.

“At Madrid you really are exposed. The first time I went to visit David [Beckham], I remember driving around the town and the hysteria was extraordinary, it reaches a point where you can almost sense the panic.

"Every single day in Madrid you are having to cope with this feverish expectation, whereas in Manchester you’re cuddled, you’re cradled. Sir Alex Ferguson protects you. In Madrid, it’s a case of: there’s the deep end, go swim.

"He’s thrived there. He was ready for it, he was made for it, he needs it, the attention. He wants to be the top man in the biggest matches.”

This week it is Ronaldo’s former team-mates who are required to try to corral his growing irrepressibility. Neville insists the plan will have been plotted long ago in Sir Alex Ferguson’s head.

Neville is rather relieved he will not be out there himself, trying to do the footballing equivalent of nailing down custard.

Instead he will be watching from the gantry as United attempt to contain their former star. And it is not only Ronaldo who will require careful attention.

“Listen, they will have to get close to [Robin] Van Persie,” he says of Madrid. “He can be devastating

one-on-one in the penalty area, too. Give him room and he will really cut you. That is what makes this such a fascinating game.”

That he sees detail, that there will be more than one tactical issue tomorrow, is typical of Neville’s approach to punditry. No match, not even one involving Ronaldo, can be dismissed as one dimensional.

To seek out the game’s subtleties, his research is more than thorough. For his Monday Night Football show he arrives at Sky’s studios before breakfast, spending the day poring over tapes, looking for clues.

As he works, he spills out ideas, talking at a pace some of his harsher critics would suggest he ever managed to run at. Not that he would ever say something as personal as that in his commentary. Whatever the speed they emerge, he will choose his words carefully, more than aware of the affect they can have. An affect he remembers from his days as United’s right back.

“In your younger years you’re so sensitive to everything that’s said about you as an individual,” he admits. “Criticism breaks the skin. If 20 people tell you you’re gorgeous – not that I’ve had to cope with that myself – you’ll remember the one who calls you ugly. When you get older, you realise it’s just noise, it will go away. Words are just a representation of a moment in time. They pass.”

Though it is a mark of his excellence in his new role with Sky that no one, none of the players he meets in his other job as England coach, or the volunteers when he is out promoting grass-roots initiatives for McDonald’s, has yet to accuse him of being unfair about an individual’s performance. He usually gets it right. Well, mostly.

“The thing I get most stick for is picking the man of the match,” says Neville, who was speaking in his role as McDonald’s ambassador for The FA Community Awards 2013. Neville will be visiting grassroots clubs involved in the awards programme and overseeing the Coach of the Year assessment process.

“I picked [Danny] Welbeck the other day against Liverpool and got universally battered. Honestly, the guy comes into my ear, asking who’s your man of the match? I’m so involved in watching the whole, I’ve very rarely narrowed it down to one. I’m scrabbling for a name from three or four.”